soap and glory
by ambivia
Summary: Laundry ruins her life a couple times, the barista across the road is far cuter than he has any business being, and this one pair of lacy lingerie really has it out to destroy her. Ah, the joys of student life. —nalu, college au. for Marcy.


**dedication—** it was _chokecherries_ ' bday last month and i, being the asshole i am, was utterly mia during. this is part of the make-up present. iwaoi smut is somewhere on the horizon marcy i promise u (๑ゝڡ◕๑)

 **request** — _ahh yes i would like to put in a request for "this asshole keeps changing over my laundry and putting it on the wrong setting he's ruining evERYTHING laundromat college!au" in nalu #5 pls. maybe. idk how to do this help._

 **notes—** why do all my nalus end up being so fucking nerdy idk i just? also i dont understand how this ended up becoming a coffeeshop au im so sorry

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 **soap and glory**

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"Are you serious?" Erza cocks an eyebrow over her glass of cranberry juice. "Never? _Not once?"_

Lucy shifts uncomfortably in her seat, aware that now everyone around their table for six is staring at her, expressions all varying degrees of pity. Juvia looks flabbergasted; Levy's exasperated beyond belief; Gray just throws an amused smirk in her direction before going back to his bacon. Typical.

Erza's shaking her head, red hair swishing under her fuzzy beanie. "You've been here, what, two months? And in all that, you've actually managed to never do it?"

"Why am I not surprised?" Gajeel mumbles around a spoonful of granola.

Lucy shoots him a withering look as some milk dribbles from his spoon back into the bowl. "Oh, and like _you're_ one to talk."

He pauses, blinks one, before giving a conceding nod. "I take that."

"I still don't get it," Levy interjects. "Like, how? No, but… _how?_ " She shakes her head in mild disbelief. "With the logistics of it, at _university_ , I didn't even know that was possible…"

"It's possible," Gray says with no hesitation. His affirming nod is part wisdom, part self-pity.

Lucy sulks, cleaning her knife with a tissue before spreading jam on her toast. It's not _that_ weird. She hasn't had the opportunity to do it, honestly. Her home's only an hour away by train and she's there most weekends visiting her dad as per the agreement allowing her to live on her own in the first place. She's not exactly around to _get_ it done, really. Living alone means being busy.

Although, actually, she's not too sure if living in halls really constitutes 'living alone'. She's surrounded all the time, be it in her flat, on her floor, in the cafeteria like right now, lounging in the common room, walking to campus… There are always students around — hence the 'student' accommodation, she supposes.

"So you've never done it?" Juvia's eyes are round when she asks, striking Lucy all over again with how pretty she is. "Ever?"

The question makes her want to squirm. "Jeez, don't ask so _directly_ , Juvia…"

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about," Erza says kindly.

It just makes Lucy feel worse. "I know that!"

"Then why are you blushing?"

"W-Well—!" She wasn't before but she sure as hell is _now_ , thanks very much, Gajeel. "I'm still young a-and as far as I see it, there's no need for me to rush, and— and besides, I have lots of time in the future and I'm bound to have to do it at some point, so... _Yeah._ "

She feels like she's put a very good case forward, truth be told. Very convincing. Sensible. Practical. Mature.

"So it's not because you're scared?" Erza raises her eyebrow again daintily. "Not even a little bit intimidated?"

The _pffft_ Lucy deigns to answer such a ridiculous notion with is pretty self-explanatory and the ensuing silence that surrounds the six speaks volumes, much to her chagrin. It stretches on and on, with each passing second making her feel more and more insecure.

Gray's the first to break it, snorting into his orange juice. "I still can't believe it's taken you two months to grow the balls to do your own fucking laundry—"

" _I-I'm not scared, okay!_ "

Levy reaches across Lucy to grab a napkin, smiling indulgently. "Yeah, okay, Lu-chan. Whatever you say."

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#

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Lucy peeks around the corner, wide eyes taking in the ocean of rumbling machinery.

Alright, so it's less of an ocean and more of a room, but when both walls are pretty much _made_ of washing machines, it's a little bit freaky, alright? Not to mention the vibrating column of dryers in the middle all humming in unison like some psychotic overgrown wasp hive.

Her bag of dirty clothes hangs limply from the crook of her elbow, swinging as she continuously peeks around the corner to see if anyone's around, daring a tiny step further before leaping back into her little hiding spot at the end of one of the long column of washing machines.

God knows who invented the idea of communal washing up. But rest assured they were stupid, cruel, and completely ignorant to the struggles of ordinary people who _weren't_ dying to put all of their private personal — ah, _delicates_ , shall we say — on show.

Don't mistake modesty for cowardice. She's not _afraid_ of washing her clothes at the laundrette. Nevermind everything that could go wrong like her not knowing how to work the machines, her breaking the machines, them ruining her clothes, her forgetting to separate this colour from that, her putting the wrong soap in the wrong place, her forgetting to pick up her clothes when they're done, or accidentally picking up someone else's clothes, or _someone else accidentally picking up her clothes_ — yes, nevermind that the list of potential fuck ups is essentially infinite, because she's not _scared_.

Making an utter and complete fool of yourself in public is no big deal. Not at all. Hmm.

The real problem is… Well, honestly, what the hell is she meant to do if she runs into someone she knows? What if she's flouncing around with some lacy red lingerie fluttering around like a flag and one of her classmates walk in? What if her _professors_ walk in, oh sweet Lord... No, but what if she's trying to poof out her fluffy bunny onesie before popping it in the dryer — an essential to any self-respecting college girl's wardrobe, naturally — and Mr Sexy Pink-Haired Punk Barista from Fairy Beans Café walks in? That's literally all respect points for her super-cool ordering gone to shit. And she _worked_ on those orders, damn it, she _prepared_ for them for a solid minute with Levy at the table before going up and doing her best to appear as if her suave flirting as totally not prepped in advance.

All her hard work at not appearing as a socially inept reject is imminently about to be flushed down the drain. Or... through the machine? She has no idea, do washing machines even _have_ drains? God knows. Her awareness as far as cleaning clothes goes is leaving it in the washing basket, occasionally helping the house cleaner stuff them into the magical contraption that is a washing machine, and voila — clean clothes. That's it. That's all she needed to know.

Until _now_ , damn it, because 'real adults' can _wash_ their own damn clothes, apparently.

She _hates_ the laundrette. She fucking hates doing laundry. This is an actual genuine 21st century nightmare.

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#

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 _Well._ _That could have gone worse._

"Oh my God." Levy freezes in the doorway of Lucy's dorm room, horrified. "What the hell have you done?"

"I cleaned my clothes," Lucy sniffs delicately, grabbing another crumpled shirt from the bag and releasing yet another strong whiff of 'Cotton Mist Fabric Softener' into the air. "Obviously."

"With what, _paint?_ " Her neighbour steps into the room and immediately coughs, covering her nose. "It smells like you spilled the entire bottle in there, oh my goodness—"

Lucy ignores the comment, instead eyeing up her onesie and evaluating the hyperbolic _paint_ comment. It was the only thing she could bear to wear, and even it was barely salvageable. Giant pink splodges cover the once-white fur, varying from red to powdered rose.

"Did you not separate your whites and colours?" Levy asks, clearly knowing the answer as she glances into the bag to see a similar array of pink blobs dotting all of Lucy's clothes.

She had a made a point to separate everything. Whites. Blacks. Oranges. Blues. Even floral had its own damn machine, and let her be the first to say that it is not cheap to separate accordingly, okay? Cost her a damn fortune. But because of one stupid measly piece of lacy red lingerie — truly the destined weapon of her demise, she's sure of it — she's stuck looking like a marshmallow for the foreseeable future.

"I-It's fine!" Lucy smiles tightly, already budgeting how much it's going to cost her to buy new whites for her wardrobe. "I love pink."

Levy grimaces in return. She reaches up and gently paws at one of the ears on Lucy's rabbit onesie, which is a distinct shade of salmon. "I'm glad, Lu-chan."

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#

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Four trips to the laundrette later, all chaperoned by at least one of her more generous flatmates, Lucy is ready to go to war.

Her wardrobe may have doubled in size. Half of her clothes may look like cheap knock-offs of Lizzie McGuire's tie-dye project. Her room may perpetually smell of Cotton Mist. She may already be through half her budget for the month. But _God fucking damn it_ , she's going to wash her clothes like a responsible, practical adult, and this time it's going to go _right_.

She glances down at her cheat sheet. At first, the idea of walking into a public place with wad of notes on how to wash your clothes was a bit daunting — well, a little _embarrassing_ more than anything, to be honest. It kind of went against the idea of being an independent, self-sufficient successful young woman and all that, you know. But when she came across all five of her flatmates squished around a table in the common room arguing over whether hot or cold water should be the default when in doubt, scribbling contradictory instructions in different coloured pen, Lucy would be lying if she said she wasn't as relieved as anything. Both at the idea that she was lucky enough to be grouped with a bunch of people who, while eccentric, had her back, _and_ that she wouldn't have to go in on her own again completely empty-handed.

Levy's neat handwriting directs her to do a quick check before putting in the quarters and starting the machine up. _It's like taking a big leap of faith,_ Levy advises, _so check and make sure you're falling into clean water! °˖_ _(_ _⁰_ _⁰_ _)_

Right underneath, she can say Gray's hesitant scrawl: _…? Just don't forget soap._

A quick last-minute run-through suggests that everything is in place and all is going according to plan. Rolling up the thick wad of notes and stuffing them into the back pocket of her jean dungarees — because of _course_ old helping-out-on-the-maid's-son's-farm outfits would be the only thing she had left in the back of her wardrobe — she pushes her sleeves up her forearms and prepares for the final step.

She knows there's no going back. As soon as that button's pressed, the machine starts running, and her fate is out of her hands.

She gulps to clear her throat. _Here we go_.

She presses 'On'.

…

…And nothing happens.

"E-Eh? No, no, no, what— Why aren't you turning on, why, _why~_?"

She presses the button again once more for luck but the machine stays resolutely silent, mocking her in its inactivity. Knowing it'll be no help but close to flying into a panic, she whips out her cheat sheet and flicks through it at lightning pace, all the while throwing accusatory glances at the washing machine in front of her as if it's going out of its way to ruin her life.

It's a minute into her flustered state that she realises what the problem is. _Coins._

"A-Ah, of course!" The yelp comes out unbidden but she's already sprinting away from the machine and out into the street, throwing crazed glances around. Her gaze settles on Fairy Beans Café across the road and without a second's hesitation, Lucy's pelting towards it at full pace.

"Ah, yes, um," she pants to the barista — thankfully _not_ the ridiculously happy (and _attractive_ ) guy she's been working up the courage to look in the eye, but rather a bored looking brunette with a blouse done up three buttons too low. Lucy presents the bottle of water she picked up from the display with a flourish. "This, please."

The barista — Cana, Lucy notes from her nametag — raises an eyebrow at her, amusement barely perceptible but undoubtedly there. "That's one seventy-nine."

She sniffs as she slides over her bill, trying to look as unperturbed as possible. "I-I'd like change in quarters, place."

Cana's amusement disappears in a flash to be replaced with a deadpan expression. "This is a twenty."

Lucy just nods, wincing slightly. Deadpan quickly melts into loathing. And she decides in that moment that customers like her are the reason she will never, ever, ever work in retail.

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#

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When she skips across the road laden down with pockets full of coins, it feels like things are finaly starting to go write. It's like, she's _got_ this.

Hah. As if it could ever be that easy.

The last thing she was expecting was to see some guy fiddling with her machine, or for him to turn around to reveal himself as Mr Sexy Pink-Haired Punk Barista.

"Step away from the machine!" Her voice comes out as a shout like the police she sees on TV during cheesy crime dramas on lonely Tuesday nights. It does _not_ suit her, she decides. "What do you think you're doing?"

She expects him to try defend himself, say he didn't know that machine was taken, something real sneaky. But again, he surprises her by looking her square in the eye and declaring, "I was saving your load."

She chokes. "E-Excuse me?"

"You're doing it all wrong!" He gestures to her washing in the basin distractedly, waving his other hand around in the air too close to her face for comfort. "See, what you gotta do is put the powder in first, and then the blacks and whites — they cancel each out, you know, and then you—"

At this point, Lucy has blocked him out. It's pretty clear he has _absolutely no idea_ what he's doing. Which—cute. So cute. Ah, these younglings, these untried masses of youth, so innocent, so naïve, so unused to the cruel way of the world. It's her duty as not only a morally upstanding citizen of this country, but as a member of _society_ , to educate this young man, to correct his ways, to set him back on the right path of laundry so that he may go forth with clean clothing—

'Tis her duty. 'Tis Lucy's duty.

But she quickly realises, as she tries for the fourth time to interrupt his non-ending stream of babbling, that he's nowhere near done sharing his completely wrong knowledge with her. Not yet. Honestly, is the guy even breathing?

And, alright, if she takes some of the time he spends pointing out useless dials and buttons on the machine to her with over-enthusiastic gestures that accentuate his biceps _wonderfully_ to— to _admire the scenery_ , well, who can blame her?

She's only seen him in his work uniform up until now; black t-shirt, black jeans, sometimes an adorable scruffy beanie with woolly flames on its hem if she catches him during his break.

Or rather, she should say, a black t-shirt that makes his tan skin stand out all the more, the sleeves of which seem to always be straining against his arm muscles, _just a little tiny bit_ too tight so that his shoulder blades look chiselled through the fabric, his chest defined but only minimally. God, she could write a poem about that fucking t-shirt.

Dark jeans that make his legs look longer, leave him looking taller than he is (which, granted, is a good half foot more than Lucy). And when he's got the beanie on, and all she can see are teeny tiny tufts of his fluffy wooshy swishy hair poking out from under the flame patterns — God, it's too much for her heart to take, he's such a fucking _nerd_ and it's too cute and just, _gah_.

He always grins when he hands her a hot chocolate (because it always _is_ a hot chocolate; her body can do without all those unnecessary toxins and caffeine highs, thank you very much). And she's not wrong about it, Levy noticed it too, that he doesn't do that with anyone else — he usually just leaves their drink on the counter and moves on to the next person or starts some idle chit chat with the customer, but with Lucy, he keeps holding it until she has to take it from him, so that their fingers brush _just_ that little bit and, Jesus Christ, it's wonderful. _Wonderful._

Except now here he stands, not seeming to have recognised her as he rants on and on about how important this setting — the _wrong_ setting — is to a conducive and successful laundry session.

Nevermind the dungarees. Nevermind the goddamn dungarees.

She sighs. This has gone on long enough.

"No, stop, look, _stop_ , okay," she cuts him off in a remarkably Hermione-Granger-esque voice. "You're doing it all wrong. If you don't stop—" she gently lowers one of his hands, which froze in mid-air when he paused his explanation to listen "—you're going to poke someone's eye out. Besides, trust me, I can tell you from experience that you're _definitely_ misinformed."

He stares at her, disbelieving. "From experience…?"

She scoffs, thinking of the three bags reject clothing in her room and then quickly pushing away the ensuing emotion before she gets overwhelmed with regret and sorrow. "From a lot and lot and lot of experience. _Trust me._ "

Something in her eye seems to convince him. His eyes, grey and sharp, focus on her with a new sort of intensity that leaves her a little unnerved as he quickly checks her out. In any other situation, it would have just been a quick sizing-up, just taking in the stranger for what they're worth, but because this is _Mr Sexy Pink-Haired Punk Barista_ we're talking about, it makes her shiver anyway.

"Then how—" he begins, but then cuts off when he sees the rolled-up wad of paper in her back pocket and furrows his brows.

Before he can get the wrong idea, whatever that would be, Lucy hastily pulls it out herself and brandishes it towards him like some sort of weapon. "Notes, see! My friends made me a cheat sheet for laundry a-and…"

Lucy trails off when she sees the look in his eye. A fire lights in his gaze as he grins wickidely. "Cheat sheet?"

 _Ohh._ Lucy understands. The time has come. It is the time of knowledge.

"Oh, yes." She matches his smirk. "Cheat sheet."

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#

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Gray regrets so much.

He regrets letting his dork of a sister stay while he introduced himself to his flatmates and proceed to freak the living daylights out of the one girl he was interested in getting with. He regrets letting said pretty blue-haired girl sleep in his bed during Fresher's Week and then walking in on her in the bathroom the next morning. He regrets sharing his packed lunch with Erza Scarlet in fourth grade because he ended up stuck with the most problematic best friend a guy could ask for. He regrets that awful emo phase where he refused to get a haircut when he was fifteen.

He also regrets being so engrossed in the infomercial for dinosaur-shaped ice-cube moulds during their Sunday F.R.I.E.N.D.S. marathon that he was the last to say 'not it' when Erza suggested someone go check on Lucy to make sure she hasn't jumped into the washing machine after her clothes. And _God_ , he regrets walking into the laundrette at the time he did, grumbling to himself about shipping prices for said cool-as-fuck ice-cube mould.

Lucy and some shirtless idiot rolling around the floor covered in bubbles laughing, bright red lacy underwear clutched in the guy's hand like a trophy. Both glancing up at him and blushing so hard it's like he caught them screwing. Lucy proceeding to grab lingerie from half-naked guy in his distraction and shouting, half-mortified, half-victorious, "O-Olé!"

Context? None.

Conclusion?

…Gray regrets _so_ much.


End file.
